Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 1, 1990 TAG: 9004010032
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
Georgia Power Co. officials say there was no risk to the public in the incident at its Plant Vogtle power plant.
A truck ran into a power pole, cutting off electricity for 36 minutes.
But the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has organized a 10-member team to investigate, just as the commission is reviewing plans submitted by the nation's 113 nuclear generating plants.
It is the end of a decade-long effort to establish standards to prevent and respond to such blackouts.
Industry officials and the NRC say the complexity of the issue and the enormous differences among plants explain the difficulty in formulating nationwide regulations for dealing with power failures.
But critics such as Robert Pollard, a former NRC engineer who is with the Union of Concerned Scientists, see a glimpse of a larger issue.
"The significance of the event is that it illustrates the danger of the NRC leaving high-priority safety issues unresolved for more than 10 years," he said.
The incident began when a construction truck backed into a transformer pole. That cut off power to one of the plant's two units, which was being refueled. Two backup diesel engines were supposed to kick in if power was lost, but one failed to do so and the other was undergoing maintenance.
The incident also shut down the other reactor. The regulatory commission is still investigating to determine why.
The lack of a functioning backup power system led plant officials to declare a "site area emergency," the second highest of four categories developed by the NRC.
It was only the second such emergency since the categories were developed in 1979.
But officials said despite the potential for serious problems, the emergency ended soon afterward. The backup generator eventually was started manually.
But there was enough potential for serious problems that the regulatory commission assigned a team to investigate.
It was only the agency's fifth such investigation, and it has the potential for effects on nuclear plants nationwide.
A 1975 NRC report on reactor safety first focused attention on the problem.
In its annual reports for the past decade, the agency has listed blackouts at nuclear power stations as an "unresolved safety issue." In 1988, it developed station blackout guidelines for the industry.
But an audit last fall found initial responses from utilities were often inadequate or inaccurate.
A draft letter prepared by the NRC staff said its audit of 10 blackout plans showed "a lack of completeness and a tendency to interpret or extend the guidance in a manner to justify minimum design changes rather than improved protection against station blackout."
One proposal, for example, recommended the control room be evacuated to save power to deal with an emergency.
by CNB